The Flu Epidemic

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Federal health officials say for the third straight week, the flu is widespread in every state except Hawaii.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say anywhere from 16 to 64 million people come down with the flu each year.

Locally, hospitals are seeing similar issues.

Now, Baptist Golden Triangle Hospital is increasing its nursing staff, along with their medical and cleaning supply orders.

Dozens and dozens of flu patients have been coming here, to Baptist Golden Triangle Hospital, seeking diagnosis and treatments for the flu.

CDC reports this season is on its way to being the most severe season since 2014-2015.

Over the last three weeks, ER Nurses have treated a few hundred flu patients.

“Two weeks ago, we had a 162 positive flu tests in a week. The week after that, it was a 147 and then, we’re currently at 87 positive flu tests for this week,” says Baptist Golden Triangle Hospital Nurse Manager of the Emergency Department, Sandy Holman.

That’s almost 400 patients Baptist Golden Triangle has treated for the flu, so far this season.

On average, the ER sees 160 patients a day, but lately, that number has climbed to 215.

To keep up with the surge of patients, the hospital has had to order more cleaning supplies, masks, flu tests and studies.

Nationwide, the increased need for those supplies this flu season has even caused a shortage of masks.

“We actually were on back order for multiple months and went you know, a day or two without, where we had to improvise and figure out what we were going to do, and we’ve also had to swap our flu swabs because our primary company we were getting those from, they actually were on a shortage as well, and so we had to go with a different company.”

The nearly double amount of ER patients, creates flow issues for the facility.

“Longer wait times in the lobby. We’re not able to get patients pulled back to the room as quickly as we normally do, so we just had to make arrangements in regards to our flow. We moved equipment and swabs out to the front desk, so we could start swabbing in the lobby to get testing back quicker for those patients, in order to get them back discharged,” says Baptist Golden Triangle Hospital Nursing Director of the Emergency and Trauma Departments, Lauri Sansing.

Two Baptist patients are in the critical care unit right now due to flu complications, but there have been several other hospital admissions.

Sansing says those complications have led to respiratory illnesses and bed shortages.

“At times, when we are full, we do keep patients down here until a bed does open up upstairs, but we ran into situations where we had to get more ventilators brought into the facility with the respiratory diagnosis, that we had to make sure that we could accommodate for all of our patients.”

Sansing also says more facilities are mandating flu vaccinations for their employees, to prevent them from getting sick and spreading it to patients.

Baptist Golden Triangle Hospital is at a 99.5% vaccination rate for employees.